mice in boots

No guesses on what Abigail might be? Not one?

Strictly speaking, that's not true. The Occasional Domestic and Livestock Overseer did have her sister call me, to make sure that it was not a cow. She thought Abigail would be a good name for a cow -- and I agree -- but she wanted to make it perfectly clear that she was not willing to take over milking chores during our next vacation. We assured her that it was not a cow. We cannot afford to lose her good graces, so we added "cow" to the list of banned animals (which also include anything reptilian).

I will have to sweeten the pot a little. So I am offering the following ball of sock yarn to the first poster who comes the closest to figuring out what Abigail might be. Her name is actually a pretty good clue.

I have found that socks made from this yarn (a cotton/wool/nylon blend) do quite well in the washer and dryer. This is a big bonus to those who have no problem spending two months knitting a pair of socks but resent handwashing them, despite the time investment.

And so I will have to blog about something else. Today was one of those rare days where bloggable things just kept presenting themselves. I will have to go in chronological order, so I will begin with the boot box. (A very good place to start. Sorry, just watched that Antwerp train station video again after reading Crazy Aunt Purl's post, and now the song is stuck in my head. If you haven't seen it yet, go watch it.)

We have a large plastic bin on our miniscule back porch, that holds all manner of rubber boots, shoes, athletic equipment, rabbit food and supplies, gardening tools, etc. We noticed about a week ago that the rabbit food had a hole gnawed in the bottom. A deeper search revealed the telltale tiny droppings. Yep, we had mice, but Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival was sucking all our time and we couldn't deal with it just then. In true procrastinator fashion, we moved the rabbit food inside and vowed to clean out the box when the weather cleared.

It hasn't stopped raining since.

We quickly learned that boots had to be carefully emptied out before putting them on in the morning to do chores. This morning, my LSH emptied an entire mouse's nest worth of bedding out of his right boot, and decided that something had to be done right then, rain or no rain. He set to emptying out the box, and eventually discovered this old woman and her children in one of Secondo's long-outgrown shoes:

Any mom can sympathize with the way those babies are latched onto that momma with such a death grip that they never budged.

Clearly, they were outgrowing their space in that particular shoe, and had decided that an upgrade to larger quarters was necessary. Primo took pity on them*, and carefully relocated them to a tree stump in the woods. He unwisely wore crocs (who knows why, when all the boots were spread out for him to help himself to his own) and tried to keep his socks dry by tiptoeing through the lakes in our backyard.

Now the boot box is all cleaned out and the boot pairs are organized, from the smallest pair:

to the largest:

and almost all sizes in between.

If you come to visit the farm, we can almost guarantee there's a pair in there that will fit you (unless perhaps you have size 15 feet). With all this rain, they are definitely necessary equipment at the moment.

* We don't normally take pity on mice, as demonstrated by the fact that we keep the killa from manila, aka Midge, in our home to deal with any unwanted visitors. She just dispatched one yesterday morning, although we had to ask Terzo not to announce to all and sundry that she had killed a "rat." Or -- as I had originally thought he was yelling, while I was in the shower -- a "bat," which really had me worried.